The Land of Nod
by Virgins-and-Surgeons
Summary: Every one of them has a different sense of what is beautiful. -- Oneshot series, character analysis.
1. Solace

Every one of them has a different view on beauty.

Beauty is solace.

Byakuya Kuchiki knows beauty. He knows it all too well. Though from outward appearance, you would assume the man had no appreciation for life at all. Sunrises are normal things, as are sunsets. The cooling breeze kissing his skin is a mundane relief, a disinteresting thing that he gives no attention to. Even the cherry blossoms, his patron saint of flowers, are a thing that has been seen and seen time and time again, as the seasons change; spring, they come, and they eventually wither, as they always have and always will. He has seen this a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times. He will see it a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times more.

Everything is seen through a monochrome filter. There is nothing that brings color to his world. If you were to replace him with an automaton at this moment in time, what would be the difference? Would there be one? Byakuya himself isn't sure, and doesn't trouble himself with the question. But the question does persist; "Are you real?" "Are you still a man, or are you a machine?" He doesn't know the answers, and doesn't ask the questions that prompt for them. There is no time for questions, when there is so much work to be done.

And there is always work to be done. There are papers to be signed, hollows to be slain, shinigami to discipline into the soulless work machine in man's skin that he himself has been tempered into. There is always work, and there must always be work, because when there is no work, he is left with himself and all his memories. His memories of a time when there was color, when there was emotion and love and joy in seeing the cherry blossoms. When he had something to go home to, someone to look forward to seeing again.

Sometimes, on those lonely nights where he has no work to busy himself with, when he lays in bad and stares at the blandly-colored walls, imploring them for some sort of distraction to his busied mind, he remembers beauty. He remembers a wife that left him all too soon. He remembers the alien sensation of laughter, of feeling a swell in his breast that he could call bliss. He remembers the cherry blossoms in color. The kiss of the cool night breeze against his skin as he sat and gazed at the garden in gorgeous spring bloom, Hisana on his right, her light weight against his side. The sunrise with her hand in his, watching the skies turn from inky black, flecked with starlight, gradually lightening up into a brilliant canvas of hues. The sunset, with her head over his heart as they lay sprawled in the garden, amongst the flowers and their perfume, watching the stars in serenity underneath the cherry blossom trees she so adored, the small pink petals drifting lazily down over them like a blissful rain.

There is nothing that isn't stained with her influence. Nothing she hasn't soaked in her memory.

Byakuya remembers Hisana, when he is alone; when he can allow the porcelain shell of a perfect man slide away, and quietly mourn. Sometimes, something happens; something reminds him of her, and it's too much, and the porcelain shell cracks, shatters at his feet. These small meltdowns have happened less and less over every passing year, until he allows the emotion to simply...die away. The colors are no longer in his grasp, and he watches, helplessly, as they run, puddle at his feet and turn blank and toneless, a pure white. The color in his world is gone. He has let it slip away once again, this time, permanently. If Hisana is not there, then the life in him has gone with her to the grave.

And this is how it remains, fifty years later. He is still dead inside, and Byakuya will remain as such for as long as he lives. There is no hope for the color to come back. There is no wish for the ability to see the cherry blossoms again.

There is only the beautiful solace, the silence of a man settling into lifeless serenity.


	2. Blood

Beauty is blood.

If you ask Kenpachi Zaraki what he thinks is beautiful, you most likely won't get a straight answer. Mainly because asking a man solely devoted to death and destruction, adrenaline and blood and carnage, is like asking a lion why it doesn't see the grace in the gazelle. It's just far too busy ripping the gazelle apart to really give a damn about the elegance of the creature. Beauty to him is something romantic, something superfluous. Something he doesn't need.

But he knows beauty, in its own way. To him it's a nameless thing, lucid and silvery and just out of his grasp, but all around him in any matter. It coats his ragged blade and, if it's a good fight, coats him, too. Whatever he's swinging at is inevitably going to be coated in it as well.

Beauty is the rush of adrenaline following the silver-hot pain of being cut. It's the rush of death breathing down your neck and the weight of your sword stuck in a body, a living, breathing, screaming, swearing thing that's just as ready to kill as you are.

He's not exactly what you'd call 'elegant'. He's far from such a pretty, fanciful word. He's a killing machine by choice. He lives for destruction, and fights for the sake of the fight. There was never really anything else; you fight to survive, that's how it goes in Rukongai, especially in the higher districts. He was one of the ones that just never stopped fighting, like some of the pansies out there that decide once they've gotten a steady income to just stagnate, settle down into complacency. From the very moment he named himself, his life has been bloodshed, a choice that has worked out so far for him.

He's the Captain of a fucking Gotei division. An entire Company of his own. All by swinging his sword at things until they stop moving. This lifestyle's brought him nothing but good so far.

They do call him a monster, and he doesn't contest this. He is a monster; a beast baptized in blood, something that only lives to kill. But no matter how he's lauded as a soulless demon, a devil in human skin, a mindless killing machine, he'll never be mindless, and he's always retained a shred of humanity. This shred, a sliver really, has pink hair and rosy cheeks and happens to be a hyper little killing machine. He doesn't wonder what he'd be like if she wasn't there to link him to humanity, and she doesn't wonder, either. They've never bothered to. There's no point in pondering what isn't real; what matters is what is real, what you do have to worry about. It's not carelessness, just a certain sort of complacency with life that other people hunt for their entire lives and never mind.

It's something Zaraki and Kusajishi both never wonder about. He is content with Yachiru on his shoulder, directing him in the opposite direction he probably needs to go, and she is content in watching over her Kenny, making sure that he enjoys himself. The danger of their escapades is something far away, but always close at hand. The entire division of his is very aware that they could die at any moment. Kenpachi and Yachiru are incredibly aware of their impending deaths, and know that any time they have their fun on the battlefield, that they could come back without the other, without a close friend, or not come back at all.

But this is just another day-to-day thing that they'll deal with. They'll handle death when it comes to them. And it's very easy to say that they'll tackle it, screaming.


End file.
